Distraction

Are the Republicans distracting us on the issue of torture by claiming that because two Democrats were in the know as to what the CIA was doing that no one is entitled to really know what happened?

What is the difference between authorizing a technique after reading one of Jay Bybee's or John Yoo's Office of Legal Counsel memos where the means of "enhanced interrogation" were laid out, let's face it, it was torture, and being told in a meeting under wraps of security clearances that "enhanced interrogation" techniques were being used?

Frankly, we all knew that someone was torturing in the name of the American people. Information was leaked to the press, the Washington Post specifically, in 2004. Does that mean we are all complicit and therefore, we aren't entitled to full investigation, disclosure, and prosecutions, if appropriate?

This week in testimony before Congress, a former military interrogator, Ali Soufan, claimed that it was the private contractors who came in and without the experience or the understanding upped the ante on how to get information out of detainees.

He considered them thugs. That makes this entire mess even more compelling. Now we have to know, because if it was the privatizing of intelligence work that destroyed the system, we have a lot of cleaning up to do, by getting contractors out of the business of keeping us safe for democracy. Like everything under the Bush administration, private trumped public, and with it all of the rules of the constitution and decency. Leon Panetti, Obama's head of the CIA, has already announced that only CIA agents are allowed to interrogate detainees now. However, Congress immunized private contractors from liability!

I can understand why Obama is saying no to the release of the images of what really happened, claiming they would merely inflame sentiments, provide more recruiting materials for young radicals, and consequently, harm the troops. He is commander in chief.

But watch Jon Stewart's take on the complexity of transparency and truth from last night's show. Especially with regard to the discharge from the military of yet another Arabic translator, Dan Choi, because he is gay. That's 54 discharges of Arabic translators because they are admittedly gay. As Stewart reminds us, at least Dan Choi and the other translators would understand what someone was saying after being waterboarded!